Load order basics question

[wayneout]

When you first open Fallout 4, you can click on "mods" and it takes you to bethesda.net. I am using an Xbox 1 controller so I press "y" to take me to load order. Then you have a list of mods going down the list. Is the mods at the top of the list the ones that should come first? Or they the ones that should come last? I will try to provide a sample. I have mod1 that uses (calls on) mod2 and then mod2 uses mod3. It would seem to me (senior citizen) that mod1 should be the first to load then mod2 and finally mod3. If that is true, then should I put mod1 at the top of the list? Or the bottom of the list? I have read a lot about load orders but not sure how Bethesda.net has that list setup. And not real sure that I understand load order anyway. Thanks

[JimmyRJump]

I seldom use Bethnet to download mods and use Nexus Mod Manager instead.

 

Load order is what it says: the order in which mods are loaded. There's two kinds of mods. Regular texture mods that replace files from the original game and then mods that add stuff to the game. The latter need a plugin (an esm, esp, esl or esp-light plug). Such a plugin has all the information from the mod and needs to be loaded into the game at a certain place with regard to the priority of the other mods you have. That's the load order. For best results you should use LOOT to do the sorting for you.

[StormWolf01]

Hi Wayne!

 

In regards to what you're asking about. I'm going to refer to Mod1 as "required" and mod 2 and mod 3 as "patch 1 and patch 2"

 

You are correct that the required file will need to be put in order prior to the patch files. As the game reads your LO from top to bottom.

Mods that your game will need to see first, should be towards the top of your list. Such as mods that change the world. It's important to have those towards the top, as those need to load to make whatever changes to the cells that you are in or will visit.

Next should be any that make changes to NPC's. For much the same reason. but that's usually less work for your computer to do.

 

The in game mod manager does not have any sorting capabilities, other than allow you to sort them manually through a slightly tedious method.

There's several modmanagers that can help you out with that, that also have a lot of extra functions. Or if you are looking for something a lot simpler, that does a lot less: Such as just adding the mod to your LO, and letting your change where it sits in the LO let me know and I can point you to a couple of much simpler ones.

 

Or if you want to just do it completely by hand, and make the changes to your load order via editing the plugins.txt file, I can tell you how to do that also.

 

Also, one thing that you might notice, when playing with a controller. This game ends up with a LOT of controller acceleration, when playing it on PC. Like, the crosshairs move across the screen really fast, making it hard to target. Or the camera ends up moving too fast, making it hard to walk around.

If you have a problem like that limiting the Frames Per Second (FPS) that the game will run at through the settings for your video card can help a lot.

If that ends up being a problem for you, let us know, along with what video card you have, and we can point you in the direction on how to take care of it ;)

 

Cheers! Stay well!

-Storm